Vision

Vision

As propelled by Gonzaga’s mission and heritage, the Gonzaga Institute for Hate Studies works for the realization of a global society committed to human flourishing and the common good. First founded in 1997, as responsive to our institutional and regional context, the GIHS is positive, enduring, and distinctive catalyst within academia toward greater knowledge of the human condition, the advancement of human dignity and human rights, and fulfillment of the hope for a just, inclusive public life.

Hate Studies - Toward an Academic Field

Hate is a distinctive feature of the human condition. Despite the inherent dignity and basic goodness of humanity, the dimension of hate in human affairs is widespread, as is its influence and consequence on individual, social, and institutional levels. No matter how we define it, hate underlies many of the world’s most serious ethical, legal, and social issues, both yesterday and today. More people have died because of hatred than from any other human cause. Terrorism, unjust war, crimes against humanity, intergroup violence, and hate crimes are some of the most pressing problems confronting the global community.

Yet we still do not know enough about how hate works. What causes hate? From where does it come? How and why does it develop? How does hate affect the individual, the group, the workplace, society, nations, and international relations?

Just as importantly, what can we do to address hate, prevent it, combat it, or even transform it?

Hate Studies is an emerging academic field with contributions from scholars and practioner-experts worldwide. Hate Studies spans interdisciplinary inquiry and promotes integrative learning. The field includes scholars and other researchers in the humanities, social sciences, and the professions, as well as practitioner-experts, policymakers, human rights leaders, and many others.

A major premise of Hate Studies is that through gaining a clearer understanding of hate and efforts to address it, we can engage and develop theories, concepts, models, and approaches from across the academy and beyond. While academia has a unique capacity to provide usable and testable theories, no single discipline or methodology will lead us to “the answer.” We must develop and link disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches to the challenge. A major goal of Hate Studies is to apply, analyze, improve, disperse, generalize, and implement these intellectual products and processes toward positive, practical change in society, government, culture, and in our individual and interpersonal lives.